Cythnia Palmquist knew just how she wanted to celebrate the big 5-0. It was “mischievous” and “a little bit rebellious,” something she’d been thinking about for years.
She would donate a kidney to a stranger.
“A healthy person only needs one kidney, and I have two, so why not?” Palmquist says.
Years earlier, she’d offered to donate her kidney to a coworker in need, but it never happened. Then, a few months before Palmquist’s 50th birthday, she heard a podcast about the National Kidney Registry’s kidney exchange program. She registered immediately.
And Everett Verigan, 39, who’d been on dialysis for three years and waiting for a kidney for four, is beyond grateful that she did.
Waiting for a kidney
There’s no history of kidney problems in Verigan’s family. He’d always been healthy, until a bout of COVID-19 early in the pandemic landed him in the hospital. A few months later, he went to urgent care after losing his voice and blood tests showed he had kidney failure caused by a rare autoimmune disorder.
“My doctor told me pretty much I had to start getting ready for a transplant,” says Verigan, who sought a specialist at UCLA Health after learning how serious his condition was.
His diagnosis came just a few months after his older brother, SK Verigan, was killed in a car accident. “We were still dealing with that grief,” says Verigan’s wife, Catrina. “And his parents were fearing they were going to lose another son.”
The couple sold their house in Tehachapi, Calif., and moved closer to Verigan’s parents in San Bernardino County. He medically retired from his job as a corrections officer to focus on his health, which included dialysis three times a week. He’d start the four-hour sessions at 4:30 a.m. so he could sleep through most of it.
“Then I’d come home and work out, because they told me I had to lose a lot of weight to get approved for the transplant,” says Verigan, who ultimately shed 120 pounds to qualify for the procedure.
His wife planned to donate her kidney to save her husband, but tests showed she wasn’t a good candidate. Verigan’s cousin, Sean Verigan, offered to donate, but he wasn’t a match. He gave a kidney anyway through UCLA Health’s Kidney Voucher Program, which allowed Verigan to move up the transplant waiting list.
Innovative voucher program that started at UCLA Health expands access to kidneys across the U.S.
In June of 2024, Verigan got the call he’d been waiting for: there was a kidney for him, part of a “donation chain” of multiple donors and recipients, he says. A few days later, however, it fell through.
Meanwhile, they learned that Catrina had thyroid cancer.
“It was one thing after another,” she says.
Helping a stranger
After Palmquist registered to donate her kidney, she had to choose a site for the surgery. Her husband insisted on UCLA Health because of its history of excellent patient outcomes, she says. Not that he had much say in her donation decision.
“I told my husband, ‘I’m going to do it, so you need to take care of yourself, because I’m not giving you my kidney,’” Palmquist says. “I also told my son that: ‘Hey, take good care of yourself.’”
For Palmquist, it’s “a privilege” to be able to share her good health with someone else. In her native China, it’s against cultural norms to donate an organ to a stranger, she says.
“That’s why my parents still do not know,” says Palmquist, who has lived in the U.S. since 1998. “They cannot know.”
In the days leading up to the surgery, she started to get nervous. She’d only had one prior surgery – a “tummy tuck” – which felt less daunting. “With the tummy tuck, I know that when I wake up, I will be prettier,” she says. “With kidney donation, when I wake up, I still look the same.”
Still, she hadn’t really considered the impact her gift would make.
Getting the call
Everett Verigan and his wife were crushed when the first kidney donation plan fell through.
“It seemed like it was never going to happen,” Verigan says, “like I was going to be hooked to that machine for the rest of my life.”
He and his wife recall being inspired by a documentary about altruistic organ donors, but never imagined one might step in to save Verigan.
“I was like, ‘Wouldn’t that be crazy if that happens to you?’” Catrina says. “And we were both like, ‘Nah, that’s not going to happen.’”
“I didn’t even think there were people out there that did that,” Verigan adds.
Then they got the call. Verigan didn’t know at the time that it was Palmquist’s altruistic donation changing his life, only that a kidney would be available for him in August of 2024.
“They were like, ‘It’s 100% you’re going to get it this day,’” Verigan says.
He had a month to prepare. But right up until he was wheeled into surgery, he worried it might not happen: “It felt kind of unreal, because I had been waiting for it for so long.”
The gift of life
Palmquist’s procedure, performed by , went smoothly. She was still in recovery when transplant surgeon , came in to say he’d successfully transplanted her kidney into a man who’d been waiting for it and that all was well. That’s when she began to grasp the profundity of what she’d done.
“To me, giving a kidney was never a big deal. It was just like giving away a pair of Jimmy Choos, a really nice pair of shoes, so you want someone to get it,” Palmquist says. “But when the doctor told me it worked perfectly, I started to choke up, because that’s when I realized that it’s not an object. It’s something that can keep another person alive, and it will continue to live and work after it leaves me.”
It moved her to consider that the recipient of her kidney was in the same building as she was, also recovering, even though they didn’t meet.
Verigan experienced some complications after surgery – he was allergic to the anti-rejection drugs that accompany an organ transplant – but knew he’d been given a second chance at health thanks to the “gift of life” Palmquist provided.
“It just amazes me that she just did that out of the blue,” Verigan says. “It changed my outlook on humanity.”
“It finally feels like things are on the upswing,” says Catrina, who is recovering from cancer treatment and doing well. “When he got his kidney, it felt like the whole family took their first breath again.”
Connecting donor and recipient
In March 2025, Palmquist and Verigan and their families were special guests at a Los Angeles Lakers game.
Both were amused by their size difference. She stands 5 feet tall. He’s 6-foot-3. “She’s tiny, and the kidney’s working great in me,” Verigan says.
“Size doesn’t matter,” Palmquist quipped.
She still downplays what she did, giving her kidney to a stranger. That wasn’t hard, she says: “I didn’t do the most difficult part. It was the surgeon who did that.”
But meeting Verigan and his family reminded her of the powerful connection human beings share. She’s deeply grateful to have provided some light after the many dark days the family experienced.
“It made me realize sometimes the little gesture you did might make a very big impact to others,” she says.
For the Verigans, Palmquist’s gift is life-changing, “like the beginning of our lives again,” Catrina says.
“The day we met Cynthia, I’d never seen his parents smile so much in the last four years,” she says. “We’re just so thankful.”
